5 thoughts on “Dongtini — Episode 66”

I think I love your podcast so much because you affirm my own pop culture biases…I’ve been thinking about watching “The Audrey Hepburn Story” for the past past couple of years, but couldn’t bring my self to do it, because, well, FUCKING JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT. And after hearing Simone’s analyses, I really don’t think I could take it. I’m not even a HUGE Audrey Hepburn fan (though I do like her), but I am a big Truman Capote fan, and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is my favorite of his short stories, and even though the movie is radically different from the book, I still enjoy it (minus the racism), mainly because Audrey Hepburn takes this really great, bitchy, super-cynical manic pixie dream girl character that was totally wrong for her and played the role as an adorable, quirky manic pixie dream girl instead, and it worked (at least I think it worked). So while I can deal with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the idea of JLH as Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly makes me want to stomp on bunnies. Baby bunnies (and just so you know, to get an idea of how much this pisses me off) I’m a vegetarian…the non-fish eating kind…).

I love the novella (or whatever Breakfast At Tiffany’s is too! I watch the movie all the time and the racist Mickey Rooney character absolutely kills me. I wish some of the lesbian stuff had made it from the novella into the movie. The Chinese mocking was okay but not the lesbo action? COME ON, ’60s!

How times have changed! Back then it was totally normal to be offensive about Chinese people and not okay to be okay. Now it’s not okay to be offensive about Chinese people, but mostly okay to be gay. Ahh-so.

I haven’t read the story but I really want to! I forgot to mention from my notes about the idiotic scene where JLH says “I think I understand the significance of the cat!” and then goes on to explain how she realises that the cat doesn’t have a name like SHE hides from her real name or some shit while Capote nods approvingly in the background, all of this completely idiotic since she flat out explains why she didn’t name the cat and it being about attachments. Ugh.

In retrospect, I think the book might have been more racist than the movie (though more “blatant racial slur racist” than “offensive stereotype racist”).

And that scene sounds horrendous! (Especially considering that Capote intentionally left the country during while the movie was being filmed). When I was kid, my aunt actually tried to explain the significance of the cat to me (again, after the character had already explained it in the movie) and I was like, “no fucking, duh!” (except I’m sure I didn’t actually say that because I was generally a polite respectful child). The cat is obvious, everyone. On a related note, I did love the movie growing up, and went through a phase where I called all cats (whether I knew their names or not) “cat” until someone told me to quit it because it sounded like I was talking to myself.

So the Brad Pitt video is awful and totally reminded me of the terrible Nicole Kidman Chanel Advertisements which always make me think “I’m Darncer-I love to Darnce!” every time I see her. You all have to watch it right now-it’s awful: